I've been doing sysadmin, programming, devops, etc professionally since 1995 and I've had to shave SunOS yaks, HP/UX yaks, Solaris yaks, Windows yaks, MacOS yaks, MacOS X yaks, Python yaks, Ruby yaks, Java yaks, Make yaks, C++ yaks, git yaks, cvs yaks, rcs yaks, ext2,3,4 yaks, Netapp yaks, Fibrechannel yaks, Cisco yaks, F5 yaks, nfs yaks, smb yaks, frame relay yaks (!), tcp yaks, rpm yaks, deb yaks, homebrew yaks, npm yaks, pip yaks, yum yaks, apache yaks, http yaks, xml yaks, tia568a no wait b yaks, serial crossover cable yaks, who the hell thought they could use 75 ohm as thicknet cable yaks, ... you get the idea.
We deal with a complex ecosystem with even more complex interactions that is often poorly documented at best. We're lucky when we can treat it as a black box and it all works. But often something breaks and suddenly we're hoisted by our own petard and there's yak hair friggen everywhere. I consider it a modern miracle that I don't have to pin ethernet duplex anymore! Glad we finally figured that one out.
Converse to your assertion, I switched to OS X back in 10.2 days because I got tired of shaving the hairball that was Linux desktop at the time. Oh, you want to print something? Here's an lpd yak for you... have fun! Oh you have a new monitor, here's some scanline settings to put in your xconfig that may work. Mac OS X is amazingly smooth as a desktop OS. [1]
But since you mention OS X, I'm reminded of of my favorite Apple technical note ever which began: ”As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X.” And that should apply to our whole industry, really... a swarm of bees.
Anywho, shaving yaks, story of my life, at least it pays well.
Pro-tip: when shaving yaks, take notes. I guarantee you you'll shave this yak again and it's handy to have your own reference to refer back to... even in these days of google, stack overflow, and quickly moving technologies. At worst, maybe it will be inspiration for a fun blog post some day. :-)
[1] So here's a fun story. Back in 2003 or so, I wrote a perl script which would forward emails to my phone via SMS. It did so by POSTing to a web form on a Verizon server. Worked fine when I was developing it on my OS X desktop, but failed to work on my Linux server. Yak shaving time. Eventually I'd broken out tcpdump after diagnosing that the Linux server, sitting on the network right next to the Mac, couldn't even connect to the Verizon server. Turned out the Linux server had ECN enabled, which being new at the time, Verizon's firewall was rejecting. Only had to peel about 5 layers of the onion on that one.
> Oh you have a new monitor, here's some scanline settings to put in your xconfig that may work.
I suggest you try linux again, find new yaks and update your arguments. You haven't had to mess with scanlines in over a decade. I've never done it. Heck, you don't even need to create an xorg.conf any more. And some time Real Soon™ even X11 will be gone.
Oh my yes. If you are a geek with zero proprietary software dependencies (as I am), then the Free *nixen offer the qualitatively best experience these days. I was a very early adopter of OS X when it was released (starting with the betas), and happily spent nearly a decade there. At some point the friction of Linux & BSDs decreased relative to the friction of OS X.
I remember editing XF86Config, .fvwmrc, and PPP init scripts back in the long ago, but I'm damned if I could do so from memory today.
I've been doing sysadmin, programming, devops, etc professionally since 1995 and I've had to shave SunOS yaks, HP/UX yaks, Solaris yaks, Windows yaks, MacOS yaks, MacOS X yaks, Python yaks, Ruby yaks, Java yaks, Make yaks, C++ yaks, git yaks, cvs yaks, rcs yaks, ext2,3,4 yaks, Netapp yaks, Fibrechannel yaks, Cisco yaks, F5 yaks, nfs yaks, smb yaks, frame relay yaks (!), tcp yaks, rpm yaks, deb yaks, homebrew yaks, npm yaks, pip yaks, yum yaks, apache yaks, http yaks, xml yaks, tia568a no wait b yaks, serial crossover cable yaks, who the hell thought they could use 75 ohm as thicknet cable yaks, ... you get the idea.
We deal with a complex ecosystem with even more complex interactions that is often poorly documented at best. We're lucky when we can treat it as a black box and it all works. But often something breaks and suddenly we're hoisted by our own petard and there's yak hair friggen everywhere. I consider it a modern miracle that I don't have to pin ethernet duplex anymore! Glad we finally figured that one out.
Converse to your assertion, I switched to OS X back in 10.2 days because I got tired of shaving the hairball that was Linux desktop at the time. Oh, you want to print something? Here's an lpd yak for you... have fun! Oh you have a new monitor, here's some scanline settings to put in your xconfig that may work. Mac OS X is amazingly smooth as a desktop OS. [1]
But since you mention OS X, I'm reminded of of my favorite Apple technical note ever which began: ”As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X.” And that should apply to our whole industry, really... a swarm of bees.
Anywho, shaving yaks, story of my life, at least it pays well.
Pro-tip: when shaving yaks, take notes. I guarantee you you'll shave this yak again and it's handy to have your own reference to refer back to... even in these days of google, stack overflow, and quickly moving technologies. At worst, maybe it will be inspiration for a fun blog post some day. :-)
[1] So here's a fun story. Back in 2003 or so, I wrote a perl script which would forward emails to my phone via SMS. It did so by POSTing to a web form on a Verizon server. Worked fine when I was developing it on my OS X desktop, but failed to work on my Linux server. Yak shaving time. Eventually I'd broken out tcpdump after diagnosing that the Linux server, sitting on the network right next to the Mac, couldn't even connect to the Verizon server. Turned out the Linux server had ECN enabled, which being new at the time, Verizon's firewall was rejecting. Only had to peel about 5 layers of the onion on that one.